PELAGIANISM
873
PELAGIANISM
inal perfection. Apollinarism and the Antiochean school, though in other respects very much separated from each other, teach with one voice that the creation of man was imperfect and incomplete, and they detine salvation through Christ as a second creation, coming after and completing the lirst. Salvation, say they, is the finishing of creation, and on that account is necessary. But such an opinion as this is altogether a perversion of Chris- tianity. It stands in direct opposition to the true Chris- tian conception of God, which admits of no defective creation, but demands one every way perfect and com- plete. Besides this, if the first man sinned in conse- quence of the defective nature with which he was cre- ated, it could not be properly sin, which is the action of a free will. Pelagianism, on the other hand, maintains Che precise opposite doctrine in asserting that man was in his original creation perfect, and did not need emen- dation. Julian of Eclanum, who sought to carry back the Pelagian doctrines in general, and to rest them on those principles which lay at the foundation of the sj's- tem, taught in his argument against Augustine that in acknowledging the doctrine of original sin, i. c. of a moral pollution extending to the personal will of the in- dividual through Adam's sin, we are led to the conclu- sion that as a Saviour God comes into contradiction with himself as a Creator, since by salvation he would make better what by creation was made good and per- fect; and that now, since human nature remains the same as it was when originally created by God, viz. good and perfect, there can be no such thing spoken of as a positive deterioration or injurj' of it.
If we accept this view of Pelagianism, which main- tains the creation of man as originally perfect, it stands rightly in opposition to Apollinarism and the Antio- chean school. But holding the perfection of human nature in such a sense as to exclude all idea of moral injury, it falls into the opposite error of overestimating it, so that for it salvation has only an accidental impor- tance, and too great an independence is attributed to man. Though the Pelagian builds the chief doctrines of his system on the doctrine of the original perfection of human nature, yet, in a just development of Pelagi- anism, which stands in antagonism to the whole doc- trines of anthropology, we regard the freedom of the will as fortning the fundamental conception or principle on which the whole depends. We begin, therefore, our representation of Pelagianism with the doctrine of the freedom of the will, because the doctrine of sin is con- ditionated upon it, and the doctrine of grace depends upon both.
The doctrine of Augustine, and of all the Reformed confessions, at least those of the Calvinistic type, is, that in the direction of holiness, or of spiritual good, the will of man is in entire bondage ; that man has no freedom to do anything really good before God ; no nat- ural power, even in the faintest degree, to love and serve God. This they rested on the doctrine of the entire de- pravity' of human nature. For if it is true that man is totally depraved, it must follow as a consequence that the will is in a state of bondage to evil; and also, that efficacious divine grace is necessary to deliver him from this bondage, and to create a will to that which is good. But while ilenying the freedom of the will to this ex- tent, i. e. to that which is good, they did not mean to affirm that man had ceased to be a responsible agent, or tliat he had lost the natural power of willing or of choosing ; or that when he chose evil, he was acted upon by a power outside or apart from himself which neces- sitated his Avilling or choosing in one direction rather than in another; but simply and solelv that, in point of fact, man does always choose that which is sinful, and will certainly and invariably continue to choose it till he is made the subject of renewing grace. His contin- ually willing that which is evil is the result of the de- pravity which taints his whole nature; but in so choos- ing evil, ho acts spontaneously — he only does that which he chooses to do.
The doctrine of Pelagius stood in antagonism to this view of the state of man's will. His primary position is that moral freedom — the power to choose right or wrong — the "possibilitas utriusque partis" as he defined it — can never by any means be lost or impaired, that man must always and unchangeably stand in the same relation to good and evil. He argues in his Epistolci ad DemeU-iudem, c. 8, that if we Avould not place both good and evil in the region of physical necessities, but in that of moral freedom, man must possess an equal relation to both, and be able equally to choose, and to act upon his choice in both directions. " Neque vero nos ita defendi- mus naturx bonum, ut eam dicamus malum non facere posse, ([uam utiqne boni ot mali capaccm ctinm profite- mur, sed ab hac eam tantummodo injuria vindicamas, ne ejus vitio ad malum videamur impelli, qui nee bo- num sine voluntate faciamus, nee malum." The sin is not man's, he reasons, if it is necessar}'. Much more, if it is his, it is free; and if it is free, then he can avoid it. Now if the will is free, he continues, ever ready to do one of both, then it follows that it is able to do both, i. e. to sin or to avoid sinning. In his Confession of Faith, sent to Innocent the pope, Pelagius says, "Libe- rum sic confitemur arbitrium, ut dicamus nos semper Dei indigere auxilio ; et tam illos errare qui cum INIani- chajis dicunt hominem peccatum vitare non posse, quam illos qui cum Joviniano asserunt hominem non posse peccare ; uterqne enim tollit libertatem arbitrii. Nos vero dicimus, hominem semper et peccare et non pec- care posse, ut semper nos liberi confitemur esse arbitrii." He places the freedom that appertains to the will in an abstract indifference to good and evil. '"Neque enim aliter spontanenm habere poterat bonum, nisi a?que eiiam malum habere potuisset." In like manner Julian also thus defines what he means bj' the freedom of the will : " Libertas igitur arbitrii possibilitas est vel admit- fendi vel vitandi peccati, expers cogentis necessitatis, quiB in suo utpote jure habet ntrum surgentium partem sequatur, i. e. vel ardua asperaque virtutum vel demersa et palustria voluptatum." The freedom of the w-ill, he says, is nothing else than the " propulsatrix necessita- tum ;" so that no one is either good or bad in anj' other way thai! by his choosing freely to be that which he is. Freedom is, h« says, the "possibilitas peccandi et non peccandi;" and as such is the "facultas in quod volu- erat latus snopte insistendi arbitratu." In answering his arguments, Augustine thus states Julian's doctrine : "Li- bram tuam conaris ex utraque p^rte per a?qualia mo- menta suspendere, ut voluntas quantum tc; ad malum, tantum etiam sit ad bonum libera."